Brothers And Fathers

   The bike burbled beneath me. Rounding the twisties, the sound of the inline four radiated under, around, and through me. The treetops held the sound in, bringing it back to me in muffled cadence.
   I’d chosen to take the UJM that weekend. Universal Japanese Motorcycle.
I’d bought it in the mid nineties. This UJM. Kind of a plain Jane kind of ride, no frills, with simple maintenance. The valves are hydraulic, requiring none of those pain in the ass routine adjustments with phrases like: bucket under shim, valve lash, and threaded screw adjuster. Ah! Viva la simplicity.
   My other motor, an evolution Sportster in a tight little rigid, spent the weekend without me. I’m a total slut when it comes to motorcycles. Love em’ all. If I hear one more asshole on their crotch rocket say, “This’ll out perform a Harley and it’s cheaper.” I’m gonna puke.
   It's apples and oranges. Marilyn and Brittany.
   Going to visit my father and brother one fall weekend, I took country roads with rolling farmland and sweeping vistas. Going to visit my brother, whom I’d not seen for awhile, I was both excited and dismayed. Excited for the opportunity to get away and ride, dismayed by the fact of seeing my brother and the ensuing guilt associated with said visit.
   An interesting character, my brother. Raised by the same man, we were, however, the seed of different men. He took after his biological father in that they lived a bit closer to the earth than I cared to. Or perhaps maybe was even able.
   I was and am a wage slave. It is all I know. I wish that it were different but that is the way it is.
A high school graduate, I jumped into the factory life. I'm grateful to be employed but I like referring to my job as going in, being served a hot steaming turd, eating it and complimenting the chef. All with a smile on my face.
   My brother feeds himself as best he can. Given an artistic bend, he paints and sells paintings. No Rembrandt but impressive to people who don’t paint and fancy it genius.
   I think he, my brother, views my life as one of privilege. The heir to the fortune.
   My father was a working stiff in a factory just as I now am. He was just good with his money and enjoys a comfortable retirement. No wealth. Just the pleasure of seeing his seeds sown.
   Using an ATM machine one day, my brother was amazed at the apparatus and the cash it gave me.
 "You just push buttons and it gives you money?" I told him a little more than that was involved.
   It was October when I went to visit them. My brother and father.
   The best course of action, I decided, was to check into a little old motel I was fond of, using it as a base of operations to visit them both and not feel obligated to stay with either. In the secret folds of my brain, those little spots that are hidden from others, I referred to this motel as my BOO. I shall not explain these initials and insult your intelligence for I am confidant that you have ascertained their meaning.
   The wind blew through the changing color of leaves.
   I’d discovered the BOO A few years before. At that time it was ran, the BOO, by a cool older couple who'd operated it for the last twenty-five years.
   I love the shit out of motels. I’ve stayed in a lot of them in my many motorcycle travels. I had many favorites, but this was the favorite of favorites. However, this year, the motel had been sold to a mid-eastern couple.
   I am not a racist. Nor do I care to discuss race. It is one of the many topics we humans, in our discourse, should perhaps not discuss. Just with me maybe. You can refrain from discussing race, as well as religion, abortion, the weather, and hell, whatever war we might be mired in at the time. I care, yes. But when I’m my on my bike going everywhere and nowhere, I-me, don’t give a shit. So when I’m at a motel, when I’m at BOO, don’t bug me. Okay?
   I checked into BOO, the mid-easterners being very nice. I drank some vodka and watched some telly. That is how I strengthen myself for things I want not to do. Booze and telly, late night, clears my head. Somehow in the muddling of mind in reruns and alcohol, I find clarity. The clarity that is essential for me to visit my father and brother.
   Some dumb ass had to bother me at BOO my first morning there that October morning,  right in the middle of a chain adjustment, as usual, the first questions came. The same questions asked by many a dumb ass on many a journey.
   “Where ya going? Where ya been? What year is it? My brother has a Harley. Zat a Harley?
I try to look the bike over early in the AM so as to avoid the dumb ass questions.
   As stated earlier, it is difficult visiting my brother and father. Difficult, for different reasons in each case. I feel guilt when I leave my father. He is seventy five and I always feel as if there is something  I should do or be doing for him. But he is fine. He gets around well, and, I believe, might just be sharper mentally than I.
   I start the bike and leave the motel parking lot. Looking right and left then right again, I notice the blue glow of the fluorescent lights overhanging each door to each room. The bike warms quickly as I head into the metropolis. The teeming city of sixty thousands that holds the home of my father. The inline four purrs contentedly between my knees. I am at my father’s home much too quickly.
   Dad’s place is quite stately. He retired from the factory in management. He lives a simple, humble life. He likes a nip of vodka himself. After our usual greeting, we sit. I tell him of my plan to visit my brother.
   “God,” says Dad. “Ya sure?”
   “Yup.”
   “Okay.”
   Their relationship was always, a bit strained to put it mildly. Mother had my brother four years before she and my father married. Dad had always resented the little shit. No judgment call here. Dad was a good provider and a good man. Principles before personalities.
   So I take the ride from my father’s home to my brother’s….er….home. I have to ride through the small town where I went to high school. Wow. No change here. Same one stoplight, same one bar, same one gas station and same old narrow minded attitudes. I could see it in the gas stations attendant’s eyes as I filled up. Or, perhaps it was me. This was what I expected to see so this is what I saw.
   I puttered out of the village down a winding, hilly, country road littered with views of farms, farmland and farm animals. Beautiful-beautiful and peaceful. I entered the drive leading to the old farmhouse. It was much more lane than driveway. Weeds kissed my handlebars on each side. The growth was enormous. Thistles and any which weed you could name. I thought perhaps I’d taken a path to nowhere. A wrong turn that would end with the cued music and Rod Sterling’s voice. Just when a huge bump sent my ass off the seat and my knees up around my ears, just when I settled back on the seat, regaining my composure, a figure stepped from the foliage. I dropped anchor. No skid. Just the binders sending the message received to the drum brakes that resided inside my cast rear wheel.
   Stepping from the weeds, a man, gray hair long to his shoulders, stood. His legs were apart, shoulder width. Facing me but just a little sideways which I assumed was to make himself a smaller target; he held a staff in his hands. It was wooden and smooth. He did not smile. I on the other hand, silly-ass that I am and happy to see my brother, took my right hand from the throttle and waved. Flashing my toothy grin I then cut the e-stop. The burble of the inline four stopped immediately. It had been a few years since we’d seen each other and I’d never been to his current “home.” Had he not recognized me, I'd be easy pickings. That thought ran through my helmeted noggin' and just after it sent the message to click the e-stop into run mode and mash the starter button with my thumb, he smiled. I lived another day.

   We were at the drive-in years ago. I believe the movie was Darker Than Amber with Rod Taylor. It was a double feature with There Was A Crooked Man. I could be wrong at the latter movie title although I knew for sure it had Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas in it. My brother was home on leave from the Corps. Doing my paper route I’d found him an old Nova. We spent two days patching the body with putty and painting the car primer gray with the rims brush painted black, by me. He taught me how to mix the putty and how to spray paint in the wind. We drove the Nova that night. I cannot remember at what point he said it. He said how ashamed he was to have me as a brother. He was nine years older. He was in the Corps. He was my hero.

Abduction

He was quiet. Very.

I ran into him at the drugstore one Saturday. Choosing his words carefully, slowly, he’d filled me in on his day’s activities.  I noticed the glare coming off his bald head as he spoke of mowing his lawn. It wasn’t much of a lawn, I’ll tell you.            
 I’d bought my little stucco ranch two years before he moved in. His near silent comings and goings unnerved my wife at first. The previous owner had been a young couple, their kids running activities constant fodder for our bitching’s. Funny how we talk about each other. Tongues click and clack informing each other of other’s comings, goings, and lawn mowing’s. Perhaps, just a thought, we should all tend to our own gardens.  

            His only purchase that Saturday was a newspaper.

We tried to tend to our own garden, my wife and I. But when she showed up, our tongues clicked and clacked.

It was two weeks after the drugstore Saturday when she clicked up the walk to his little white house with the little green shutters. I loved those shutters. As a matter of fact, I loved his house.

            As I said, there really wasn’t much of a yard. Perfect. Mowing sucks. What little grass there was could be cut with a hand held trimmer. None of those annoying whining weed whackers for this guy. Perfect again. He did sometimes mow. More for something to do, I believe.  

            His roof was green shingles to match the little green shutters. It was just a pretty pretty little house trimmed in green. Next to the starkness of my stucco bungalow, it reeked of charm and I stood quite envious.

            She wore a light green dress with flat shoes and a floppy hat the day she clicked up his pretty little walk.

            Sam was cool. We’d been friends since, well, even before high school. Sam pretty much played by the rules so I guess it was just natural for him, becoming a cop. He was good, no, great at the job. I’m glad someone wants the job cause I sure wouldn’t. Sam was a natural, you could even say, he was born a cop. He made plain clothes but at his insisting, went back to uniform. He said this was real police work. The kind he liked. I asked once if he looked forward to his time being in. I asked if looked forward to retirement. “Shit no,” was all he said. Sam did not waste words. He always mentioned how in the book of Proverbs it said that you could tell the lack of wisdom a man possesses by the multitude of his words.

              From time to time I saw my little bald neighbor’s girlfriend coming and going from his little green roofed house with the little green shutters. Her ever present floppy hat always matched her outfit.

            “The bitch can dress,” My wife said one day. She really liked Sam’s practice of the quote from Proverbs.

            He hardly, or more precisely, never really spoke to me. My little bald neighbor. Other than the time at the drugstore.  

            Seeing him at the store again, with his singular purchase of newspaper, I asked about the health, happiness, and overall welfare of his girlfriend. To match his singular purchase his singular reply was, “Fine.”

            Did he also subscribe to Sam’s favorite quote from the book of Proverbs? Heaven knows.

            The days past as we busied ourselves with life and tried to mind our own business and gardens. She in her floppy hat came and went and went and came. We all went to work and came home and went to work and came home. Sam sat on our little bungalow patio and very briefly, with few words of course, filled us in on his weeks happenings. Being privy to all unusual events in our little community with its little houses and little lives, he kept us informed on new gossip. Nothing that would jeopardize his position and get him in trouble with the powers that be, just neat little stuff on crime and cases closed. Cool guy Sam.

            Sam had married his high school sweety. A cheerleader she had been and so remained to this day. She was his biggest fan. Thought his doo doo had no odor. I knew different thanks to a drunken fishing trip years back and Sam’s impromptu taking of a dump too near camp. But fish were caught, beer was drank, lies were told and fun was had by all. ‘Cept Sam’s Cousin Ernie, who, on going to take a leak, placed a bare foot in an unfortunate spot.

            Sam and the lifelong cheerleader, just as us, had no kids. “Hate ‘em,” he’d said. “Noisy.”

            My crap did smell for I found myself being ever nosier.

            The floppy hat girl was, well, sorta' lookin' good. I felt guilty spying as she’d meandered up his walk; however, being the male I was and am, I justified it in the usual way.

            One afternoon Sam and I sat on the patio sipping gin and tonic. I told him I thought the neighbor’s girl was sorta hot.

            “Looks dowdy and low to the ground ta' me.”

            Wow. A whole sentence from Sam.

            That next weekend the poop hit the wind makin’ device. Cop cars were all over the street in front of the bald dude’s house. Going to tell the wife, when we got to the window all cars and everything and everybody were gone.

            “Zover,” says my wife. Damn Sam and his favorite verse.

            We got the scoop from Sam on the goings-on not much later. A week, week and a half maybe.

            I’ll tell you in my words, rather than his as getting him to complete sentences is like threading a needle, drunk, on a roller coaster.

            The little bald neighbor was a wig case. Like, gonesville.

            His house, Sam said, was plastered with pictures of this model. From the newspaper ads he’d cut them.

            This model was all on the walls, wearing floppy hats in a lot of the pictures. The man was in his own little fantasy dreamland. He’d called the cops saying his girlfriend had been abducted and forced into pornography. In the last shot on his wall was her in an underpants-bra ad. The dude was walking around dressing like her, speaking in a female voice, and having this hot affair with her. And I’d said she was hot. Egads!

            “Ala Norman Bates,” Sam had said.

             “How Hitchcockian,” my wife replied.

            Wonder what the new neighbor will be like? Hope they don’t read Proverbs.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                   

We've had the SR for a year now and are quite happy with her. She is Deb's bike but my wonderful wife lets me borrow her the odd time. I tried several mods and have decided to keep her pretty much stock until she is paid for. The turn signals have been removed. I purchased some smaller bullet style ones and will put them on eventually. I have a Lucas style taillight that will replace the wart looking stocker. It'll take modifications but it'll work. Time and patience. The footpegs need to go back a couple inches. I found some on ebay off an SR500 that may work. 75 bucks. I may take the plunge and spring for them. We'll see.

The Sporty and Honda watch all the comings and goings, staring at me forlornly. They needn't worry for they are well loved. Both have been put in hibernation for the winter. I've owned the Sport, as you well know, for nearly thirty years. Her front tire has been dipped in the Atlantic and the Pacific. She has seen the Rocky and Smoky Mountains. I grew allergic to speedos long ago. I'd estimate her milage at 100 thou. She has plenty of life left. These girls last forever in caring hands. She is being passed into caring hands. I am giving her to my son. I, of course, will worry for his safety but life is short. She'll treat him right and he'll return in like kind.

And if fate should intervene and he and I pass into the great beyond. I am reminded of the words of Jack Kerouac.

Safe in heaven dead.

My Favorite Year

My favorite year was 1973. Junior year of high school found me working in a tool and die shop. Minimum wage. A buck sixty an hour. Senior year it was raised to two bucks. I was rich!

A 65 Mercury Comet, four door, black with a white top, was my chariot of freedom.

School sucked. In second grade we had a phonics book. On the cover was a picture of a guy reading a book. On the cover of that book was the same picture and on and on and on. I wondered how far that went. Infinity?  I asked the teacher. She rapped me on the head with a wooden ruler, calling me stupid. I was pretty much done with formal education at that point.

Home was cool. Had the basement to myself. I'd "borrowed" traffic cones from the city and bought a blacklight. A fluorescent poster, Dennis Hopper riding his Pan and flippin' the bone, was taped to the concrete block walls.

Vocational school saved me. Senior year I did a co-op thing. Went to school for a few hours in the AM then worked eight hours in the tool and die shop. I made spoon rings and ran drill presses, milling machines and a small lathe. Cool job. Did a bit of welding. Caught the fringe of my big bell Levis on fire! Sorta' looked like a cartoon I imagine.

A short girl with long black hair held my amorous attention. She spoke her mind. I liked that. Later, a sweet blonde that deserved better.

Jimi rode with me in the Comet. Driving to school I imagined he, Noel, and Mitch in the backseat as the eight track wailed away.

And so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually.............